


a door to a room he will not be coming back to

by morphaileffect



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Angst, Drama, Family Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-03
Updated: 2011-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-23 09:20:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morphaileffect/pseuds/morphaileffect





	a door to a room he will not be coming back to

There was really only one place anyone could expect Yamamoto Takeshi from ten years later to be.

That was in a little sushi shop in a quiet neighborhood just outside the main commercial district of Namimori City.

This was - quite literally - his first visit here in ages. Playing pro baseball had forced him to travel a lot, and in-between games he had found himself swept up in the troubles of the Vongola family. There was hardly any time to call and write home, and even less time to actually drop by.

And this was exactly why he took his sweet time eating his tamagoyaki.

Behind the counter stood a man in a white chef's uniform, wiping and putting glasses and plates back onto their racks and into their cabinets, moving packaged ingredients between this freezer and that, and generally keeping himself on his toes. The staff was absent that day, Takeshi noted: his father didn't have an apprentice, and he wouldn't trouble himself with part-time helpers when business was slow... and Thursday mornings just happened to be especially slow. 

Wearing his sunglasses, he could follow his father's movements without being obvious. Still, sunglasses were a superficial disguise - a master of the shigure souen technique would know if he was being observed, especially at such close range, by a suspicious-looking, quiet young Japanese man wearing a suit that was just a bit classier than what salarymen of the age usually wore, and who sported a large scar on his chin that looked like something caused by a particularly serious switchblade.

But without evil intentions, any kind of tracking would just glide under his radar. There was no need to be cautious if there was no chance of him getting hurt.

All the same, Takeshi knew, he shouldn't be too obvious.  _Gokudera told me we shouldn't say we're from the future, otherwise we'll be messing things up._  So in-between bites, he merely watched his father out of the corner of his eye. He pretended to stare at the doorway now and then, as if he had nothing better to do than to wait for a friend who was never going to show.

The truth was, he was content just sitting there... watching his father move methodically between stoves and freezers and racks and cabinets. Watching this familiar man with deep laughter lines in his face acting in old familiar ways. 

To keep from being kicked out, Takeshi ordered plate after plate of different types of food - the ones he liked the most. He always ate a lot anyway, and if he paced himself he could stay longer.

And maybe some part of him was hoping his taste in food would give him away.

"Okyakusan," the man behind the counter finally called. Takeshi looked up. And for a second, as his eyes met his old man's, as he waited for his old man to say something, his breath caught in his throat.

"You don't have to wear your sunglasses in here, you know," Yamamoto Tsuyoshi of Takesushi restaurant said to his first customer of the day. "The lights aren't very bright, you might strain your eyes."

Takeshi sighed with relief. It was his father's policy to befriend all his customers, and if someone who was obviously from out of town happened to wander by, and happened to be looking lonely, it was S.O.P. to engage him in light-hearted banter.

(Takeshi had definitely  _not_  wanted to look lonely... though it wasn't as if he could go back to an hour or so earlier and change all that.)

"Does it bother you, Ossan?" He pushed his shades up the bridge of his nose, with a disaffected smirk. "Sorry, but I'll be keeping them on a while longer... my eyes don't like the light today."

His father didn't like shifty customers. He tolerated them until they caused trouble, and then he threw them out. But until they caused trouble, he treated them like anyone else who dropped by - with respect and unwavering friendliness. "Heheh. I see. Rough night last night, huh?"

Takeshi suddenly felt like he had not inspected himself enough times in the mirror this morning. Did he look like a young hungover thug? If he did, then it was a good thing - because the Yamamoto Takeshi this sushi chef knew would never become a young hungover thug.

"Well... you could say that."

"Ah, you young ones. Never thinking ahead." He clucked his tongue and shook his head in a way that almost made Takeshi laugh outloud. "You should take care of your health while you're young. You'll pay the price for your vices when you're my age."

 _"Your age"_...? Yamamoto Tsuyoshi was in his early forties. He lived healthy, preached healthy living, and never complained of aches and pains from as far back as his own son could remember. In fact, he was the sort who mocked pain and teased people into getting better. Most of the time it worked, though Yamamoto couldn't help but wonder how it would have felt to have a mother at his bedside, who took pain quietly to heart.

"Ahh... look at me nagging a grown man." He grinned. "You're smiling, though. I bet your dad's just as bad, huh?"

He hadn't even realized he was smiling. What he feared was coming true - he was letting his guard down in this place.

"Well... my dad fussed over me a lot, but I kind of miss it."

Yamamoto Tsuyoshi paused.

He bowed his head and scratched his nape: a mannerism his son had inherited.

"You must've been close, you and your dad..."

Takeshi looked away and felt the smile leaving his lips.

"Still feels like we were the only two people in the world who could really understand each other."

Tsuyoshi laughed as if that was brilliance itself. As if the sadness behind those words slid right by him, like many other obvious things.

"Hey, well, that's great, you know? I'd sure like to hear my boy say something like that sometime..."

Takeshi knew he shouldn't say what he was going to say next. He had seen too many times what it led to. It was just that he had never been on  _this_  side of the sushi bar counter asking, and for that reason, he was unable to help himself.

"You got a kid?"

Tsuyoshi's face practically started glowing. "You bet! His name's Takeshi. He helps out here, sometimes. I got a picture of him, you wanna see?"

 _Oh, no. No, thanks,_  Takeshi's started to say, but he knew this routine, and he knew there was no escape.

With superhuman speed, Tsuyoshi had whipped out his wallet and had flipped it open like a cop showing a badge, and was leaning over the sushi counter so he could better show it to his guest. And for politeness' sake Takeshi found himself leaning forward, so he could take a better look.

The beaming boy on the photograph was young. So young that something inside Takeshi twisted - an old sword slash, perhaps, or a phantom bullet that was never taken out. Something long buried in the years.

"See? Handsome little devil, isn't he? Takes after his old man."

Tsuyoshi was leaning forward close enough to see through the dark shades, into Takeshi's eyes. He was close enough for Takeshi to reach out, wrap an arm around the old man's shoulders and pull him into a tight and sudden hug. He was close enough for a confession. Or for a realization. He was close enough for a hundred impossible things.

Takeshi simply nodded and leaned away before anything stupid happened. He had to seem disinterested or lose at this secrecy game - one of many he had never agreed to play.

Tsuyoshi looked at the photograph, shaking his head. "He's fifteen now. All grown up! Seems like only yesterday he was in diapers and giving me a heart attack - always crawling around touching and tasting everything. Couldn't keep still for one damn second, really."

"No brothers or sisters?"

"Naw." He hid the wallet away. "He's already a handful."

Ahaha. "He a good kid?"

"Best in the world." A corner of the man's lips rose. "Though it'll probably embarrass him to hear that from me. Teenagers, you know." He cleared his throat: a signal that he was about to change the subject. "And he's never, er, done that well in school, that's always been hard on him. He's great at what he loves to do, though."

"Which is...?"

"Sports! Baseball!" Trust the Oyaji to light up like that at the first opportunity to mention his child's achievements. "Yeah, he's a real champ! I got his trophies and medals lined up on the wall right here at the back! Would you like to - "

"No." This is as far as I go, Yamamoto told himself - here is painful enough. "No. Thank you. I'm sure they're impressive, though."

Yamamoto Tsuyoshi let out a somewhat-apologetic, somewhat-disappointed grumble, and then quietly returned to his duties about the restaurant. This was a bad way to end their conversation, Takeshi thought, so he decided to follow it up:

"It's good that kids could put their energy into something like that... keeps them off the streets."

"Ah yes." Tsuyoshi shrugged. "Well, Takeshi's not the sort of kid who'd go off and do stupid things. He knows I worry."

It was strange, how easily he said that. Growing up, Takeshi always had that at the back of his mind:  _I shouldn't do these things. I shouldn't lose my way. Oyaji will worry._  But he always thought his father was just like any other parent, who vented their concerns about their children to strangers. Who lived in fear that the way they loved or the way they controlled things was too much or not enough.

"Maybe you worry too much, Ossan. Kids tend to get embarrassed by that."

At the other end of the bar, Yamamoto Tsuyoshi groaned. He leaned onto the counter again, regarded his young guest.

"If you don't mind," he began, "I'll tell you something I'm going to tell Takeshi someday. You only got so much time in this world to love, then it's all over. The worst thing you can feel in the end is that you never showed your love enough times."

 _You never said that._  Ten years in the future, while Takeshi was away, an army would raid this part of Namimori city, the quiet neighborhood just outside the main commercial district. In the middle of the night they would burst into Takesushi restaurant and start getting knocked down, one by one, until Yamamoto Tsuyoshi was tired and wounded and broken and his aged hands could no longer grip the handle of his faithful old sword.

He would refuse to leave quietly, even when given the option. He would refuse to leave at all.

 _I would have wanted to hear it, Oyaji._

"You know what I mean, right?"

In his eyes Takeshi was just a boy who lost a father - looking too old for his years, perhaps, needing some guidance, and finding it by accident in this tiny out-of-the-way place.

Takeshi simply smiled as he replied, "How much do I owe you?"

He reached into his pocket and pulled out some bills from the stack that Gokudera had given him earlier. The money he had brought with him from another time and place would not have been any good, but it was a good thing his friend had thought ahead.

"Ah! You're leaving already? Let me just get your bill."

He strode to where he kept the calculator and the invoices and the ballpoint pens. His father was always so old-fashioned, he didn't even want to have a computer for printing out neater receipts. "Let's see, one plate of ootoro, one barley tea, one sweet tamagoyaki..." 

"...Ossan?"

"...one oshiruko... big appetite young people have these days... yeah?"

"You don't have to think about your kid every second of your life, you know?" He looked out the door. "If... if you ever find yourself in a position where... he feels he has to go and you want him to stay... for your sake... "

Takeshi heard the scribbling stop. He felt himself being stared at.

"Nah," was the eventual answer. "I don't want Takeshi to regret anything. That's all I want him to do for my sake."

The scribbling sounds resumed. Takeshi shut his eyes. He wanted to say so many things, he wanted to say There are ways, Oyaji. There are ways and ways and ways. If you're pulled in all directions, and everything needs saving, every choice you make spells out regret.

"Here you go." Takeshi was handed the bill. The total may have seemed much at the time, but it didn't even make a dent in the budget Gokudera had allotted him. He paid properly and stood, stepped out the door, without fanfare or hurry.

***

"Okyakusan!"

He was already outside. He was surprised to find that the owner of the Takesushi restaurant had stepped out after him.

And all the owner had to say was: "Looks like rain."

Did it? Yamamoto didn't notice. He was wearing his sunglasses, and the skies had been looking dark all morning. "Yeah."

"Did you bring an umbrella? I have one at the back you can use."

Takeshi smiled. "I'll manage. Thanks, Oya - "

The word caught in his throat. It exploded inside him, rippling through his veins like poison, and he had to struggle so the cringe would not come to the surface.

"- Ossan."

Yamamoto Tsuyoshi pursed his lips and let out a small sigh. "Well then... take care. Make sure your head and back stay dry."

Takeshi took his leave with a smile. He didn't want to look back, but he had to. He had to take one last, long look at his father standing in front of the sushi shop, grinning and young and indestructible - one hand on his hip, the other waving goodbye.

He didn't know how much longer he had left to stay here. How many more times he could visit Takesushi restaurant and see his father moving busily behind the counter and ordering people about. Maybe this was the last time. And he couldn't tell his father he loved him.

Not now. Not ever.

As he turned the corner he felt the word inside him rip him apart. He stopped walking, leaned back against the nearest wall and took a deep breath. And another. And another. Until he realized that holding it back was going to kill him.

He tried to smile even as the tears fell, finally, even as his breathing turned into ragged sobs. It wasn't good to cry over things that couldn't be helped. He should at least be grateful for this chance, this day, the taste of his favorite things, his father's voice telling him the only thing that made living this long worth it:

 _That's all I want him to do for my sake._


End file.
